For now, at least, the Dallas Police Department has “steered away” from using drones, Assistant Chief Tom Lawrence told a Dallas City Council committee this afternoon. But when it comes to keeping an eye on the 20-mile-long Trinity River Corridor, well, it might be willing to make an exception — especially when it comes to search-and-rescue operations in, say, the Great Trinity Forest. But right now, it’s just something the department is considering, one of any number of possible options available to a department struggling with ways to keep the Trinity Corridor safe as it continues to add new amenities.

Today’s discussion, held during a meeting of the council’s Transportation and Trinity River Project Committee meeting, was the long-awaited follow-up to last summer’s initial chitchat about a subject Lawrence said at the time would require a lot of “catch-up.” The Caruth Foundation provided the grant that allows DPD to do just that: A holistic corridor-safety master plan’s in the works, and Lawrence told the council today it would be ready in two months, give or take.

Until then, he said, the department has tried to “gradually increase our presence” along the corridor, especially in the southern half. But without knowing who’s going where and when they’re going there, trying to disperse officers is a fruitless endeavor. Said Lawrence, there’s a lot of ground to cover, and it’s only getting larger once you factor in the Texas Horse Park, the Trinity Forest Golf Course, the MoneyGram Soccer Park in Northwest Dallas, the Trinity Audubon Center and all those hike-n-bike trails popping up.

David Woo/Staff photographer

Dallas Police officer Frank Ruspoli watches as a wrecker pulls a car out of the Trinity River on Oct. 7, 2010.

“I thought it was going to be easier than it was,” Lawrence told the council, noting that no other city in the country has to deal with something like the Trinity River Corridor. “When we look at how we handle the entire Trinity, there are so many different types of terrains we have to deal with. How do we deal with the wetlands, the forest, the open areas, the soccer fields in the northwest? The other big piece is, when we look at the existing ordinances we’re going to have to design Trinity-specific ordinances.” And writing those will be no easy thing.

The Trinity Trust — which, last we looked, was hoping to add everything from a zip line to a 18-hole lighted disc golf course along the river — is trying to help, Lawrence said. It has already donated one all-terrain vehicle to the department, with a second on the way. But that’s only the beginning of the beginning of the beginning, he says, noting the need for enhanced horse and bike patrols. But, again, he’s just not sure where. Not yet. The ATV, incidentally, will go to the Southeast Patrol Division, Lawrence told the council. “They have the greatest need.”

Said the chief, “We’re using things we’ve not used before. We need things we’ve not needed before.”

Mayor Pro Tem Tennell Atkins asked Lawrence how the department will work with the Dallas City Marshal’s Office tasked with stopping illegal dumping along the river. Said the chief, DPD will work with everyone, including Dallas Fire-Rescue, which might find itself having to conduct a water rescue near, oh, the Dallas Wave whitewater feature that’s still not considered the safest thing in the river.

“We don’t yet have a clear handle on what the need is, and therefore how much resources will be needed,” said committee chair Vonciel Jones Hill, who’s term-limited in May. “I brought this to you today so you can start thinking about this. The departments have been thinking about this for quite a while.” Said Hill, securing the Trinity River Corridor is “quite a bear to get your arms around.” And who knows what’s needed. Or how much it will cost.

“Let me be very clear,” Hill told the council. “This is not a matter for this year’s budget. Now, it may be an issue for future budgets, but they will bring a guiding document on what needs to be done, how much personnel is needed, how much it will cost. But for now, those are things that are still fermenting.”

You are now free to protest wherever you like wearing whatever giant head you may have in your possession.

Almost two years after six people sued the city of Dallas — twice — over its ordinance prohibiting protests near a roadway, that lawsuit’s about to vanish. All the Dallas City Council has to do is agree to pay the defendants no more than $270,000.

The suit stems from protests that took place in January 2013 along Mockingbird Lane and Central Expressway, near the George W. Bush Presidential Center that was three months away from opening. During those protests Dallas police ticketed people carrying signs that read, among other things, “I love the Bill of Rights” and “I love the First Amendment.” In order to avoid a repeat performance during the center’s April 25, 2013, dedication ceremony attended by President Obama and the rest of the X-Presidents, six plaintiffs sued the city to overturn a 1989 ordinance that made it illegal to protest within 75 feet of a major highway.

The ordinance was eventually rewritten in January 2014 to more generally outlaw “individuals carrying signs, wearing costumes, or engaging in other activities intended to draw attention to their signs or themselves.” Four council members — Philip Kingston, Carolyn Davis, Scott Griggs and Adam Medrano — voted against the ordinance in any form. Kingston called it “anti-free speech.” Dwaine Caraway, siding with Dallas Police Chief David Brown, insisted it was just “pro-safety.”

“The Court takes no pleasure in imposing sanctions on, or making an example of, any attorney or litigant,” wrote U.S. Magistrate Judge David Horan in ordering the city to pay the plaintiff’s attorney’s fees. “But neither will the Court — nor can or should it — ignore what is clearly presented to it.”

That double whammy didn’t close the case. Wednesday’s vote will, should the council vote to pay the plaintiffs more than a quarter of a million dollars. Continue reading →

In early 2012 Dallas Police Officer Bunthavuth Te shot then-52-year-old Randolph Glenn during what The Dallas Morning News described at the time as a “confusing sequence of events” involving an armed robbery. One thing was immediately clear, however: Glenn played no part in the robbery.

That is why the city of Dallas is prepared to settle a federal suit filed by Glenn in October 2013. Pending the city council’s OK Wednesday, Glenn will receive $200,000 for being shot in the leg.

Te always maintained he did nothing wrong. And as recently as court documents filed on November 4, city attorneys denied “allegations that Officer Te conducted an
‘armed assault’ on Mr. Glenn.”

According to police, around 9:45 on the night of February 2, 2012, a man stopped two officers near Grand Avenue and Interstate 45 and told them he’d been robbed at gunpoint. Police eventually found the suspect nearby, in a parked Dodge he was in the process of carjacking. Police said the suspect — 29-year-old Donnell Charles Collins — pulled a gun. An officer shot at Collins, striking him in the buttocks. A woman who was the victim of the carjacking was also grazed by the officer’s gunfire.

Collins then took off, eventually ditching the car nearby. Police kept looking for Collins, who’s been described in court documents as standing 6-foot-1 and weighing 280 pounds. Officer Bunthavuth Te said he saw a man who fit that description, and told him to stop and show his hands. Te said at the time that when the man — later identified as Randolph Glenn — refused, he shot him once in the leg.

“Officer Te believed the suspect was reaching for a weapon and fearing for his life, fired one round at the suspect,” said a police report.

But according to Glenn’s suit, he and the suspect have nothing in common. Glenn was 5-foot-9 and weighed 160 pounds. He wasn’t wearing clothes that matched Collins’. And he hadn’t been shot in the backside. And, according to his lawsuit, he is “hard of hearing.”

“The only apparent similarity between description of Collins and Glenn appears to be that both are African American males,” says Glenn’s lawsuit.

Here is how the city council’s agenda item recaps the events:

Randolph Glenn sued the City of Dallas and former Dallas police officer Bunthavuth Te alleging an unlawful seizure and excessive force. Officer Te and his partner received a dispatch about an aggravated robbery and carjacking committed by an armed man described as an African-American wearing green and white clothing. The officers, responding to the dispatch, saw Mr. Glenn, who fit that general description. The officers instructed Mr. Glenn to halt and show his hands, and in response Mr. Glenn walked toward Officer Te with a hand in his pocket. Officer Te shot and wounded Mr. Glenn. Mr. Glenn was unarmed and was not involved with the armed robbery that was the subject of the dispatch. The plaintiff and the City have reached a proposed settlement, subject to city council approval, that disposes of all claims by all parties.

The council was briefed about the proposed settlement behind closed doors last week.

Overpasses For America describes itself as a “non-partisan grass roots movement made up of everyday Americans who understand the value of the U.S. Constitution.” Their website decries “the rampant corruption that has infested our government,” and demands “the corrupt Barack Hussein Obama [be] held accountable for his many unconstitutional actions.” (Its Twitter page is a little more succinct.) They sell T-shirts. And they like to march.

Which brings us to March 1, when members of the Collin County Overpasses For America chapter took to the Northaven Road overpass at the Dallas North Tollway in defiance of the city’s new ordinance while carrying banners decorated with the “Jokerized” Obama banner (that dates back to Myspace, apparently), a “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsen flag … and at least one rifle, because, in the words of one protester, “You need the Second Amendment to defend all the rest of ‘em.” The protest drew the attention of a state trooper, some Dallas police officers and a friendly Department of Homeland Security rep who told the group’s cameraman he was there to “be a liaison to make sure you guys are safe.”

The March 1 protest, high above the Dallas North Tollway at Northaven Road

In all, looks like a fairly peaceful gathering during a cool spring Saturday in Northwest Dallas. “The free speech assembly was a success and posed no public safety or traffic safety issues,” says the suit. So the Overpass-ers thought holding another protest two weeks later would be no big deal. Not so much. According to the suit, they called the Dallas Police Department and Homeland Security to let them know they wanted to hold another march, at which point they “were informed that they would not be allowed to hold their free speech assembly because the Dallas Police Department was now obligated to enforce the City of Dallas’ free speech ban.”

The suit spends several pages reiterating what Kingston said in January — that the ordinance is “against free speech,” as the council member put it.

“Defendant’s free speech ban is content-based, targeting the political speech and message of Plaintiffs,” says the suit. “Plaintiffs reasonably fear that if they were to hold another free speech assembly on an overpass in the City of Dallas, Plaintiffs would be arrested and/or criminally charged under Defendant’s free speech ban.. As a direct and proximate result of the Defendant’s free speech ban, Plaintiffs are chilled and deterred from exercising their constitutionally protected free speech rights.”

We’ve sent the suit to the City Attorney’s Office for comment. As always, you can read it below. Continue reading →

According to Dallas City Hall, Arlington has one prohibiting “habitual offenders” from living near schools and parks and day cares; so too Carrollton, Grand Prairie, Plano, Frisco and Richardson, some of which also throw in rec centers. Denton and Lewisville are even more restrictive, adding video arcades to their stay-away lists. And according to Dallas city staff’s research, some neighboring cities, including Addison, even prohibit landlords from “knowingly renting” to sex offenders if their properties are too close to places where kids normally hand out.

But in Dallas — which is currently home to close to 3,900 registered sex offenders, about a third of whom are serving probation or are on parole, according to Dallas City Hall — sex offenders are free to live near all those places, to which Mayor Mike Rawlings responded: Not on my watch. “Where kids go to school,” he said concerning a buffer zone, “there should be a two-block area around those schools.”

On Wednesday, the back-from-summer-break Dallas City Council will begin discussing the mayor’s proposal, which has received a hearty second from the Dallas Police Department. According to the PowerPoint below, which was prepared for Wednesday’s briefing, the council will discuss asking the City Attorney’s Office to draft an ordinance that finally prohibits sex offenders from “residing within a specified distance of premises where children commonly gather,” including schools, child-care facilities, playground and public parks.

That’s about as specific as the proposal gets: Council will debate, among other things, the distance between sex offenders’ residences and those gathering places — likely, somewhere between 500 and 2,000 feet. The proposed ordinance would likely cover supervised and unsupervised sex offenders, which is significant, says the briefing, because right now unsupervised offenders “have no limitations on where they can reside.” Offenders out on probation or parole can’t live with other sex offenders, per Dallas’ existing ordinance.

Says the briefing, this proposed redo serves several functions, among them: It “improves sense of community safety” and “demonstrates the city is proactive in attempting to safeguard our most vulnerable residents.” Continue reading →

“Defendant Rowden’s conduct that caused Harper’s death was a producing cause of injury to Harper, which resulted in the following damages: loss of a family relationship, love, support, services, emotional pain and suffering, and for his intentional and reckless acts and infliction of emotional distress caused by the wrongful killing of Harper,” says Sandra Harper’s suit, which doesn’t specify the amount she’s seeking.

James Harper

The suit was filed by attorney Daryl K. Washington and is one of a growing handful he’s filed against the city in recent months. Several similar wrongful-death and excessive-force suits have been settled by the Dallas City Council since 2012, adding up to $6 million in payouts, and as Washington told our Tristan Hallman in May, “It signals and identifies that there is a major problem that is taking place in the city of Dallas,” he said. “And it’s about time someone came in and understood that the system and the police department, the training that is being offered — something needs to be done. There needs to be some kind of overhaul to the system.”

That’s what Sandra Brown’s suit insists as well: City officials, including the city manager and police chief, have “failed to implement and/or enforce policies, practices and procedures for the DPD that respected James Harper’s constitutional rights to protection and equal treatment under the law,” says the suit.

Harper’s shooting occurred after Dallas police officers responded to a 911 kidnapping call at a known drug house in the 5300 block of Borquin Street — a 911 call that turned out to be phony. Officers told investigators that when they entered the house, they saw a gun and four suspects running in four separate directions. The officers gave chase, with Rowden tasked with running down Harper. He caught up to him several times, and they fought each time; Dallas Police Chief David Brown said that at one point, Harper kicked the officer in the chest. Eventually, Rowden told investigators, he shot Harper when it appeared he was reaching for a weapon in his pocket. It was later determined that Harper was unarmed.

Sandra Harper’s suit maintains that her son had done nothing wrong that July afternoon, and that he ran out of the house only because he and the other three men “heard what sounded like someone trying to break in and made a decision to leave out the back of the home to escape what they perceived to be a dangerous situation.” It also alleges that Harper “was not aware of what was going on or who was pursuing him.”

But as a friend of the show pointed out on Facebook last night, this shouldn’t have caught anyone by surprise: Several pages of Wallace Roberts & Todd’s award-winning Trinity River Corridor Design Guidelines deal with safety and security — specifically, the chapter titled “Safety and Security.” And, per the American Society of Landscape Architects’ judges, “In arriving at this approach, the design team availed itself with the expertise of recognized park maintenance, operations and security consultants.”

The guidelines note: This won’t be easy. As in:

Security is a fairly easy concept when it involves a single asset that has definable boundaries and rarely changes. However, security design becomes much more complicated when it involves a complex system such as a large park, which not only has multiple functions and designs operating in many different environments but also, by its very nature, is open to the public. It is this openness that increases both threat and vulnerability. A safe and secure atmosphere is critical to the success of the Trinity Lakes Area. This section of the guidelines recommends measures to provide effective, cost efficient tools and techniques for implementation of park safety and security.

Among the obvious suggestions: Plant security cameras, lighted call stations, mile markers and easy-to-read signs along the trails between the levees near downtown. Also: Make sure park security officers bike up and down the trails. The guidelines also suggest something called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, which “allows for furnishings, railings, walls, landscaping and vegetation to be designed for beauty and eliminate the veil of cover for miscreants and the potential for explosive materials being planted.” (The Veil of Cover for Miscreants — my first book!)

The guidelines suggest putting the emergency call boxes “at each access point, at each parking area, other strategic points throughout the park, and every 1/2 mile along the primary trail.” And it calls for putting mileage markers along “all trails every 1/8 of a mile.”

Click to enlarge this look at the design guidelines.

The document also calls for “a full-time security force” in the recreational areas near downtown. From the doc:

A full time security presence within the Trinity Lakes Area will be critical to safety and security. The Dallas Police Department could allocate a full time security force or a separate Trinity Lakes Area security force could be established to patrol the park. It is recommended that the security force employ many types of circulation methods: foot, bicycle, electric vehicles, and potentially hovercrafts. Park maintenance employees can also play a role, as the combination of constant activity and the daily presence of uniformed park personnel helps to impart a feeling of safety and security.

In the event an emergency vehicle, police, EMS, or fire, is called to service the park, an access management strategy of removable bollards will be used at all managed access points. This access management strategy will allow emergency vehicles to access the park while denying access to private motorists. All levee access ramps will be able to accommodate the size and weight of EMS vehicles, currently Ford F-350 chassis, and police cars, while fire trucks will have to use public motorized access points. Park roads, the Primary Trail, and the paved secondary trails will allow for emergency vehicle circulation. Soft surface circulation trails may accommodate emergency vehicles depending on ground saturation.

The Dallas Police Department will be the first to admit: It doesn’t do a very good job of patrolling the 20-mile-long stretch of the Trinity River Corridor. In the words of Assistant Chief Tom Lawrence, “It’s an area we had not spent a lot of time in in the past, and we knew we’d need to play catch-up.” The problem is, the project’s rapidly expanding from north to south, from the Elm Fork Athletic Complex to the Continental Avenue Bridge to the Trinity Skyline Trail to the under-construction Texas Horse Park to the Trinity River Audubon Center to the … well, the list is only getting longer. It got away from DPD before the race even began.

Which is why Lawrence was in front of the Dallas City Council’s Transportation and Trinity River Project Committee Monday afternoon — giving the council an update on how it hopes to keep the corridor safe sooner or later. It might be later, he warned, three years at least before there’s a plan in place to police everything from the Elm Fork woods to the Great Trinity Forest to the hike-and-bike trails now running and cycling between the levees near downtown.

The Dallas Police Department has been working on a long-term solution to this for a year, when it received a $300,000 grant from the Caruth Foundation in conjunction with The Trinity Trust. That money’s been spent on everything from online surveys to neighborhood meetings to bringing in experts from the University of Texas at Dallas and the United States Park Police. And the department has learned one thing so far, says Lawrence: The Trinity River Corridor is “unique,” said the chief. “There’s nothing like it in the country.”

Michael Ainsworth/Staff photographer

Well, this show of force from Mayor Mike Rawlings would certainly keep the Continental Avenue Bridge safe.

But the department doesn’t want to create what he called “a police-only plan.” Lawrence said it needs to take into account all stakeholders: the neighbors living next to the forest and the levees, the recreational users down on the trails “and the environmentalists who have an interest” in the area. But its size — 60 to 70 square miles — and terrain, from wooded spots to open spaces, pose what Lawrence called “a challenge” when it comes to patrols, be they on horseback, bikes, all-terrain vehicles or on foot.

“I’ve worked in the southern sector for years, and there’s a great deal of misuse that occurs in the southern sector of the Trinity Forest, from illegal hunting to a tremendous amount of illegal dumping,” Lawrence told the council. He said police have “found deer blinds in the forest, which obviously should not be there. That is a challenge for us, because how do you change a culture that has gone on for many, many years. We talk to people frequently, and they don’t know what’s illegal. They’ve lived there their whole lives and don’t know there’s anything wrong with that they’re doing.” Commingle that with “ongoing criminal conduct,” including marijuana grows, and the forests present their own issues.

Ultimately, Lawrence said, the department is hoping to create something like its Volunteers in Patrol program for the Trinity River. Perhaps, Lawrence said, they might be called Forest Rangers. Officers will also need to be trained to deal with the woods, and will need different equipment and personnel to handle emergencies in the forest.

“When we look at the forest from a public safety perspective, we don’t have a lot of experience working in forested areas as an urban police department,” he told the council. “We need to develop a model we can use for the department to say, ‘This is what we will need to do at every substation to get officers trained to effectively patrol the forest.’”

Then there are the new trails and the recreational draws between the levees, chief among them the new Continental Avenue Bridge, whose success has taken city officials by surprise, said Lawrence and several council members.

“We’ve been … slow,” says Donzell Gipson, the Dallas Police Department staffer tasked with overseeing the city’s parking meters. “Parking needs in our city are changing, and available technologies are changing just as fast. So many other cities have instituted all forms of enhancements, but we’ve been slow.”

Which is why the city has issued a request for proposals from vendors interested in and capable of upgrading its outdated parking tech. Says the RFP, posted in its entirety below, “The City of Dallas wants to modernize its current parking operations to create seamless, efficient, customer-friendly, and cost-effective parking operations that is flexible and can easily be modified to fit the needs of various types of parking areas.”

Till a few months ago, Dallas' parking meters were more or less a variation on this antique.

Those who followed along back in 2010 and ’11, during the writing of the Downtown Dallas 360 plan, no doubt recall there was much discussion about bringing Dallas’ parking needs into the future … or, at least, the present-ish. Parking studies were done; suggestions, made. And only now are we just beginning to catch up, which means Dallas remains at risk of falling behind as other cities explore so-called “smart parking” alternatives that involve planting sensors in the concrete to let drivers know about free spaces long before they hit downtown or Jefferson Street or Deep Ellum.

The city is “taking baby steps to do some pilots to figure out some more dramatic ways to improve things,” says Peer Chacko, assistant director for long-range planning for the city of Dallas. Gipson says the city began crawling in October, when about 15 vendors came to town to present everything from multi-space meters to sensor-and-smartophone tech.

“They ran the gamut of what’s available in the parking community, and we said one of the main reasons is we’re about to make a lot of big decisions,” Gipson says. “This pilot will involve all the departments that touch parking. It’s not just the DPD, which is responsible for meters, but it involves the Office of Economic Development, Sustainable Development, our traffic engineers — everybody that touches our thoroughfares. What we want to do is be comprehensive and do our homework. This is about Dallas doing its homework. The time is right. The time is now.”

It’s unclear when the pilots will take off, but Gipson says they’ll be scattered through downtown, Deep Ellum and Oak Cliff. And, he says, the city might also “experiment” with car-sharing during the pilot — meaning Zipcar, which is already on the UT Dallas campus.

“There’s a future that’s coming, and I don’t want to guess what it is,” says Gipson. “There was a technology gap we went through here, where coins were our mainstay, while other cities were playing and toying with and spending money on this stuff while we did not. I just don’t want to hurry up and buy yesterday’s technology and watch everybody leap in front of us. You don’t want the things that die 20 minute after you bought them.” Continue reading →

The new protest ordinance more or less prohibits giant presidential heads. So beware.

Wednesday morning the Dallas City Council passed the rewrite of an ordinance that, until now, merely prohibited protesters from carrying signs within 75 feet of a major freeway. After today’s vote, that rule is far more wide-ranging, as it now includes “individuals carrying signs, wearing costumes, or engaging in other activities intended to draw attention to their signs or themselves.”

Council members Philip Kingston, Carolyn Davis, Scott Griggs and Adam Medrano voted against the ordinance, which Kingston blasted as being “against free speech” and unnecessary. Said Kingston, the city’s already engaged in one lawsuit over the existing ordinance; today’s vote all but guarantees more will follow, he said. Kingston said there’s already a state law regarding deadly conduct, and that should apply here.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown strongly disagreed: “We don’t believe state law application is going to cover the behavior of protesters over overpasses, hanging signage” that would be distracting to drivers, said Brown.

According to the council agenda, the new ordinance will “prohibit all conduct intended to distract motorists by individuals standing within the lateral curb lines of the highways, including adjoining service or frontage roads, as well as on bridges or overpasses over the highways.”

“The police department is telling us clearly they do not have sufficient authority to interact with the conduct — the conduct — that is the basis of this ordinance,” said Vonciel Jones Hill, chair of the Transportation and Trinity River Project Committee, where the new ordinance was debuted in November. “No one is attempting to control speech. That is not the point of the ordinance. The point is to regulate conduct.”

Speaking of, said Jennifer Staubach Gates, this ordinance is only the first step toward guaranteeing driver safety. She proposed the council bring up an anti-texting-while-driving ordinance in the future. Then she and her colleagues, except for Kingston and Davis, voted for the ordinance, which you can read below. Continue reading →